In developed nations around the world, residential schools for deaf students are giving way to the trend of inclusion in regular classrooms. Nonetheless, deaf education continues to lag as the students struggle to communicate. In the Bua School in Thailand, however, 400 residential deaf students ranging in age from 6 to 19 have met with great success in teaching each other Thai Sign Language (TSL) and a world of knowledge once thought to be lost to them. The Rising of Lotus Flowers: Self-Education by Deaf Children in Thai Boarding Schools reveals how their institutionalization allowed them to foster a unique incubator of communication and education. Charles B. Reilly, a teacher and community organizer in Thailand for eight years, and Nipapon Reilly, a Deaf Thai citizen, studied the students in the Bua School for 14 years, with periodic follow-ups thereafter. They found that the students learned little from their formal instructors, but that they were able to educate each other in time spent away from the classroom. Older students who had learned TSL in the dorms and on the playground successfully passed it on to six-year-olds who had virtually no language at all. The Reillys' study uncovers an elaborate hierarchy of education among these students, with each group using games and other activities to teach and bring other classmates up to their level. Named for the much admired aquatic plant that blooms in Thailand's bogs, the Bua School epitomizes the ideal of The Rising of Lotus Flowers, which also offers analytical evidence of the continuing value of residential schools in deaf education.

A captivating history of one of the world's most iconic and mysterious flowers Bewitched by a lotus which flowered from three-thousandyear- old seeds in his English garden, Mark Griffiths set out to track the origins and significance of this sublime plant in this beautifully-illustrated book. The Lotus Quest takes Griffiths from the headquarters of the Linnaean Society in London to a mountain top in northern Japan. As he travels in search of this ancient flower, Griffiths looks at the lotus's significance in ancient Egypt and India, the plant's medicinal uses and the inspiration it has provided to Western artists. As he tracks the plant, its story unveils a stunning vision of Japan's feudal era with visits to shrines, ruins, gardens and wild landscapes as well as meetings with priests and archaeologists, philosophers and anthropologists, gardeners and botanists, poets and artists. He even dines on the lotus in a Tokyo cafe. By the end of Griffiths' journey, when he reaches the hauntingly beautiful Japanese temple of Chuson-ji, readers will finally understand why the lotus has obsessed people throughout the ages.

A story of one of the world's most iconic flowers documents the author's research into the lotus's ancient origins and historical significance in various world regions, tracking its medicinal uses, inspiration in art and role as a spiritual symbol

A Vietnamese family is forced to flee from their homeland to escape a devastating civil war.

Living in a Hippie Community in the Australian rainforest, I, in January 1992, started to write about my visions and spiritual experiences. I described ten places in our heads as homes of the human spirit. There are many publicly known people, who are involved in the move of the Earth to a higher dimension in 2013. More than 200,000 people live on Earth and at the same time on a parallel world, which is a home for immortal people.The evangelist John spoke with a Cross of Light. I believe that a new Cross of Light will appear on Earth soon.In July 1979 I met the devil and his wife on the inner-German border. I name some people, who have been the devil of previous Earth-like planets in older universes. Alex Collier wrote in '95 that since my 40th birthday (on 3/23/1994) vibrations leave all black holes of our (local) universe, changing its nature, lifting all planets into higher dimensions. I believe these frequencies come from the Immortals, living on Earth now, including me.

Invaluable reference covers names, attributes, symbolism, representations of deities in Mahayana pantheon of China, Japan, Tibet, etc. 185 illus.